


Some observations on the nature of love

by hera_invictus



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, Sherlock-centric, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hera_invictus/pseuds/hera_invictus
Summary: "You keep me right."





	Some observations on the nature of love

**Author's Note:**

> First-time poster. Feedback appreciated.

There was a I time when I thought that what I felt for Jim Moriarty was love.

It seemed to be, as far as what I understood from hearing the fuzzy-brained average people of the world talk about it. I was obsessed with him. I thought about him all the time, to the point of distraction, even on cases that should have been interesting. I held the present on the front burner of my brain — I am, after all, a professional — but I was always waiting until I could get enough peace to think about him, only him, again.

I was fascinated by him — how he put words together, the irresistible alien lilt of his voice, the way the power of his presence belied the curiously slight, almost neat build of his body, the tailoring of his suit, the movement of his hands when they weren’t pocketed (and how often they were pocketed — why?), the unsteady otherworldly light in his giant goggling coffee-black eyes. Was he thinking about me? Did he think about me the way I thought about him? What did he want? When would I see him again, and what would we do, what would we say?

I would play out potential conversations in my head while pretending (or not) to listen to the latest in a long string of idiots talking at me. What was it like to be behind that smooth pale disproportionate wall of a forehead, in his brain, churning, calculating, barreling ahead like a truck out of control on the mountainside of ordinary people? No one could understand us but us. Nothing else meant anything. We were the only people who really mattered. We were alone on the roof of the world, and I wanted to pull him over the edge just to see what he would tell me as we plummeted down to the pavement.

That was love, as far as I knew about it from society, television, movies, those ordinary obvious people we towered so far above. Obsession, tension, competition, transaction.

People think I’m asexual, or that I don’t know what sex is. This, of course, is not true. Before I met Moriarty, I experienced attraction, even little crushes, just like everyone else. In the name of experimentation and data collection, I had physical encounters with women and men. But it never seemed necessary to do so more than once with the same person. And unlike everyone else, I wasn’t consumed by it; it never seemed so very important. When I wanted to focus on something else, I could. My interest was never held especially firmly or particularly long. I felt mild to moderate curiosity, I satisfied it, and I moved on. Eventually I came to feel that such diversions were inconveniently messy and irritatingly involved and downright unuseful — and without much effort, I ceased to give them any more of my bandwidth than was needed to acknowledge the transient thought and allow it to disintegrate and subsume into the dense matrix of my Very Important Work. Oh, there’s attraction, I would say to myself. Hello. Goodbye.

Irene Adler gave me pause, I’ll admit. That much is probably clear. A worthy opponent, and so totally unlike me as to be powerfully interesting. I didn’t know how to respond to her, and that made me respect her, more than any other woman of my acquaintance. It pleases me to remember her, and to imagine that she is living well somewhere in the world, thinking of me from time to time, and being what she is. But I feel satisfied by that. It is enough.

Irene Adler provoked my interest, and even sustained it to a degree, but she didn’t set my head aflame like Jim Moriarty did. And when he did, I thought, for a time, my god, this is it. It’s finally happened to me. This is what all these simple everyday people have been talking about all along. Distraction, electricity, pursuit, games. This is love.

And so it would be, going by our favorite cultural narrative about romance. And I think for him, it _was_ a kind of love, or the closest thing to it he could ever know. But the most important thing I learned from Jim Moriarty, with all the baroque deviance and cunning of his grotesque beautiful brain, was that fixation and love are not the same thing.

Love is trust, loyalty, familiarity, intimacy, an emotional vulnerability that may not be acted on but is nonetheless known to be available. Love is constancy, even in anger, and it bears disappointment. Love does not consume; it completes. Love is partnership, support, even comfort, however grudgingly accepted. Love is ordinary and extraordinary, a steady thrum when you’re buying milk and when you’re firing guns. Love is not the falling but the holding — holding you up, holding you accountable, holding silence for you when you can’t bear the noise of the world. Love is a conductor of light, an elevator, not as much a refiner of wits as a whetter of empathy, and of self-knowledge.

Love is John Watson.


End file.
